After the cooperation with second- and third-tier car companies was cold, Huawei was getting closer and closer to making cars.
In October 2020, Huawei released the smart car solution "HI", trying to carry out in-depth cooperation with car companies, help car companies build good cars, and produce substantive cooperation with BAIC and Xiaokang.
A year later, Huawei's automotive solution has been tested, but sales are not optimistic.
Compared with this year's vigorous new energy vehicle revolution, Huawei's cooperative cars have become embarrassing to accompany the run, will this stimulate Huawei to build cars?
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In April this year, BAIC and Huawei jointly released the high-end electric vehicle "Polar Fox Alpha S".
Because this was the first smart car equipped with Huawei's Hongmeng system, it attracted huge attention at the time, and BAIC's stock price also doubled smoothly.
Liu Yu, chairman of BAIC Blue Valley, also publicly stated that "to make BAIC BJEV return to the first place in three years, the small target of Jihu in 2021 is 12,000 vehicles." ”
According to the data of the Association of Automobile Associations, from April to September this year, the BAIC Extreme Fox Alpha S delivered a total of 857 new cars. Another Xiaokang Xilis SF5, which is mainly promoted in Huawei stores, has sold less than 6,000 vehicles from April to October.
Although the Polar Fox Alpha S Huawei HI version will not be delivered until the end of this year, and it also said that the current order has exceeded 1,000 vehicles, this does not dispel market doubts.
After all, compared with BYD Han, which sells 12,000 vehicles in a single month, and Tesla Model 3, which sells nearly 8,600 units in a single month, the sales of BAIC and Xiaokang seem to have no sense of existence.
Why can't second- and third-tier car companies sell under the banner of Huawei?
The first is that the brand recognition is too low, such as the image of BAIC is a low-cost taxi, online car, and the well-off that originally sold vans is even more unknown.
In the minds of users, only real Huawei cars are powerful enough, and cars equipped with Huawei's HI system have little interest.
Secondly, the price is too high, the BEIQI Polar Fox Alpha S ordinary version is priced at 251,900-344,900 yuan, and the benchmark is BYD Han, Tesla Model 3, Xiaopeng P7 these explosive models.
However, in terms of product strength, Alpha S has no bright spots from the design language to core technologies such as batteries and automatic driving, and it is difficult for users to bypass BYD and Tesla to choose BAIC.
Huawei's HI version of the Alpha S is even less cost-effective, priced at 388,900-42.99 million yuan, which is 137,000 more expensive than the ordinary version.
Huawei provides this solution that includes functions such as automatic driving, Hongmeng intelligent cockpit, intelligent electric, intelligent network connection, and intelligent vehicle cloud.
In terms of automatic driving, the whole vehicle is equipped with 3 lidar, 6 millimeter-wave radar, 12 ultrasonic radars, 13 cameras, and Huawei's self-developed main control chip, claiming to be a comprehensive leader in Tesla FSD.
At the 4th quarter of 2020 earnings meeting, Musk revealed that the Model 3 was successful in China, but the FSD was not successful, and less than 2% of Chinese owners of the fully autonomous driving service (FSD) priced at 64,000 yuan would be selected.
Interestingly, users are generally interested in FSD, just reluctant to spend more than 6.4 million....
Tesla is still like this, and who wants to spend an extra 137,000 yuan to buy a Beiqi Polar Fox?
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The current problem is that users of second- and third-tier car companies do not buy it, and first-line car companies do not want to be controlled by Huawei's "soul".
Huawei's plan to help car companies build cars Specifically, a smart car, intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, intelligent electric, intelligent networking and intelligent car cloud including the core functions are all responsible for Huawei, car companies are only responsible for chassis, tires, glass and other components, equivalent to Foxconn's foundry.
In the words of Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC, such a car company has no soul, and SAIC is unacceptable.
Intelligence is the soul, which is true, because the focus of the future car is the intelligent product force.
We have said that the automobile industry has entered the era of "low profits", and giants such as Toyota and SAIC have gross profit margins of less than 18%, and they make hard money.
Smart cars are different, and future autonomous driving systems can be charged monthly, and various in-vehicle software can also be charged. As a result, the valuation system of car companies has undergone deep changes, from hardware profits to software profits.
Some analysts believe that if 80% of Tesla users subscribe to FSD services in 10 years, it will bring Tesla $100 billion in operating profits every year, and the autopilot software alone is worth $850 billion, and Tesla's trillion-dollar market value comes from this.
Car intelligence is the trend of the times, even if only 2% of Chinese car owners of FSD will add money to choose, it does not affect the capital's optimism about Tesla's future.
Such a key strategic highland, car companies with a little vision will naturally not give in.
SAIC motor does not accept Huawei's third-party intelligent solutions, and other first-line car companies are likely to accept them. Therefore, in addition to BAIC, Xiaokang, Changan, these several rear car companies, Huawei's HI plan has not made new progress at present, but Huawei has not given up.
On December 2, Xiaokang Xilis released a new high-end brand AITO, and the first new car of the new brand was officially unveiled, positioned in a medium-sized luxury SUV.
Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business and CEO of Smart Vehicle Solutions BU, announced that in the future, Xilis will build a strong marketing service network with Huawei, and will build thousands of flagship stores, experience centers, and user centers in 2022 to meet consumer demand for AITO brand products and services.
He also said: "From AUTO to AITO, there is only a letter difference, and the difference is an intelligent and intelligent experience. Huawei's advanced ICT technology and smart car solutions will help AITO bring consumers the ultimate and intelligent travel experience. ”
It is not difficult to see from the new brand of Xiaokang upgrading that Huawei still wants to adhere to the principle of "helping car companies build good cars", and it will take time to verify whether it can drive sales this time.
In fact, the barriers to building electric vehicles are not high, and the new forces rushed to build cars in that year, and now Xiaomi and Baidu are also building cross-border cars.
However, the threshold for smart cars is very high, because the software and hardware links such as main control chips, AI chips, operating systems, algorithms, and information security are not the same thing as the design and manufacture of traditional cars, and no one can do it if they want to.
For example, the automatic driving system involves cameras, sensors, lidar, chips, AI algorithms and other software and hardware technologies, even if the electric vehicle sales champion BYD has no time to take care of, not to mention the second-tier car companies.
Huawei is different, it uses so many years of technology accumulation in the fields of chips, artificial intelligence, big data, etc., has been fully at the forefront of intelligent car solutions, it is far from the car, it is poor body, chassis, battery and other hardware.
In 2002, huawei's internal call for the establishment of a 3G mobile phone as soon as possible was very high, and Ren Zhengfei said at the time: "Huawei does not make mobile phones, who is talking nonsense who is laid off." ”
In 2003, Huawei established the Mobile Phone Business Unit, and later made the mobile phone comparable to Apple.
This time, it may be a matter of time before the automobile strategy is upgraded to the whole vehicle!